


College Tour

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: College visits, F/M, Percy Jackson is a wife guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: It occurs to Percy that he can reach out and touch her, so he does, pushes a loose strand of hair out of her face. She pauses, smiles at him, goes back to explaining what environmental architecture is.Or, Percy Jackson is a wife guy
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 104





	College Tour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brittanyisart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittanyisart/gifts).



> Happy birthday Bri!!!!!! I hope you have the best day!!!!!

The campus is sprawling and Percy thinks (knows) that he’d get lost if he didn’t have Annabeth to guide him around. She’s walking beside him, pointing at different buildings, a dimple forming when her mouth forms words like: _Ergonomy._

College is treating her well, it’s the first thing Percy noticed when he saw her (other than, you know, the sheer relief he always feels when he sees Annabeth). Her face is brighter. Her smile is wider. She isn’t covered in bruises and dried blood.

Despite the dark circles under her eyes and the tell-tale caffeine shake to her hands (or maybe because of them), she looks more human than god. She’s lost her summer tan, lost the scraped knees that always accompany the camp. She looks older, it suits her.

It occurs to Percy that he can reach out and touch her, so he does, pushes a loose strand of hair out of her face. She pauses, smiles at him, goes back to explaining what environmental architecture is.

They’d reunited at the airport like a romcom couple, Annabeth sprinting at him as soon as he’d exited the terminal. He’d dropped everything to pick her up. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her forehead pressed against his.

“Hey, Wise Girl,” He’d said, faux-casual, and she’d kissed him for the first time in three months.

The distance is hard.

(There’s one night he wakes in a cold sweat, hands trembling, and snags his phone off the bedside table. It’s for emergencies only, only for things worth sending up a beacon to monsters, and this feels worth it because Percy’s chest is so tight he can’t breathe. He swears he can feel blood dripping down his arm.

“Hey, what’s up?” Annabeth sounds caffeinated. Percy sighs and buries his head in his hands.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” He says, hoarse.

“Another dream?” She asks, and he nods even though she knows he can’t see her. “What was it?”

“I didn’t catch you.” He says it more to the dark of his room than he does to Annabeth.

“But you did,” She reminds him. He hears her close her laptop. “We went through hell and back together.”

He sniffs. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” There’s an unmistakable squeak of a chair. “A month and a half.”

“Fifty-three days.”

She chuckles. “You’re counting down?”

“Mom got me a wall calendar. It’s got pictures of us.”

“Which pictures?”

“There’s, uh, one from the dam dam— that’s March.”

“Any from the wedding?”

“Yeah, one. It’s November.”

It’s his favorite. He and Annabeth are on the dance floor, framed by twinkling lights in the background. Annabeth is mid-spin, her ponytail arcing behind her, dress skirt flaring out around her knees. They’re both grinning, safe and in love.

Percy describes it to her, straight from the copy of it seared into his brain. He tells her about their smiles. He tells that their friends are watching, from the other side of the dance floor. He tells her about how Sally is leaning into Paul’s side. Annabeth sighs.

He pictures her leaning back in her chair, hair tied up in a bun. He wishes, so terribly, that he was there, or that she was here, because missing her is a wound.

For everything Percy has done— saved the world, won some wars— there’s no part of him that he thinks compares to Annabeth. In fact, there’s no part of him that thinks he could have done it without her.

He isn’t one for flowery language or metaphors— he’ll leave that to Apollo, thank you very much— but Annabeth makes him understand all of those tacky valentines day cards. She makes him feel like a full person.

The distance is hard. He marks off another day on the calendar.)

“Do you mind if I drag you to the library for a little bit?” Annabeth asks, almost apologetic. “Or I can drop you off at my room first, I just have a project meeting.”

“Just admit it, you’ve been dying to give me a tour of the library since I got here.”

Annabeth opens her mouth, then closes it. She squints at him, nose crinkled, mouth a thin smile. Percy throws an arm around her shoulder.

“Show me the library. I can entertain myself while you work.”

—

Percy situates himself in an armchair a few feet away from the table Annabeth is sitting at, busies himself by thumbing through a book.

It’s some musty old compilation of mythological stories (non-fiction). It’s bound so loosely and with such weak paper he’s almost afraid of breaking it.

There aren’t many other Latin options, and Percy doesn’t feel like slogging his way through something written in English, so he’s stuck with a book on mythology.

He skips past the chapters about the gods, pretends he doesn’t give Zeus’s jacked-up portrait a good, long glare.

He tries to pay attention to the book, but he’s mostly focused on Annabeth. She’s leaned over the table, fingers tracing along a line of text on the pasteboard, mouth forming phrases he couldn’t even begin to understand. She runs the group project like she’s plotting a war. A strand of hair has fallen loose from her ponytail and caresses her cheek. She puts a pen between her teeth and bites.

Percy loves her so much it hurts.

—

“Here, I’ll carry your bag,” He says as she reaches down for it.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Let me be polite. A _gentleman— Gods—_ Do you have bricks in here?”

Annabeth’s stormy eyes crinkle at the corners. “Worse. Textbooks. I’ve gotta stay in shape somehow.“

—

It’s warm in California. They find a seat outside, and Annabeth kicks her feet onto Percy’s lap. He puts a hand on her ankles, runs a thumb along the hem of her pants.

“Did I tell you Apollo showed up on my doorstep the other day?”

Annabeth tenses. “What did he want?” She asks dangerously.

Percy clears his throat. “Oh, you know… He got beat up by some kids and needed a couch to crash on.”

“And did you tell him that you’ve got enough on your plate now with school, and the swim team, and Estelle—“

“I mean, I let him in.”

“Percy!”

He throws his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t take any quests,” He promises. She doesn’t look convinced, so he repeats, “I didn’t take a quest. I’m here with you right now, see?” He waves around them. Her face softens.

Annabeth is there, stretched out on a bench in the autumn sunset. The grey streak in her hair glints. Percy tells a joke and she nearly snorts water out of her nose. He can’t believe he’d ever forgotten her; it feels impossible, draped in the subtle architecture of UC Berkley, that anyone could ever forget Annabeth.

—

“How’s Olympus doing?” Percy asks just before popping a grape in his mouth.

“Under construction,” Annabeth says. “Aphrodite’s had me re-design her throne five times.”

Percy makes a face. She throws a grape at him.

—

Annabeth’s side of the dorm room is decorated with post-it notes and coffee rings. There’s pictures, too. Lots of pictures: of the two of them, of the Argo II’s crew, of the Athena cabin, of Grover, of Chiron. He imagines the pictures look different outside the mist. Bows and arrows changed to pool noodles, maybe. Swords become pens, or torches, or other summer-camp items.

Her Yankees cap is hanging from her bedpost, nothing but a novelty item now. It still watches over her while she sleeps. She drops her backpack on the desk.

“Home, sweet home,” She holds her arms out like she’s showing off her kingdom. “My roommate’s visiting family this weekend, so we officially have the room to ourselves.”

Percy has never lived with siblings. His cabin is always empty save for the rare night when Jason tip-toes in and takes one of the spare bunks and they take in the silence together.

(“It gets loud in there,” Jason told him once. “All the thunder.”)

He considers asking Annabeth if it gets lonely at night, without fifty of her siblings climbing all over each other, or having to shush someone, or just hearing the staggered breathing of people she loves.

He thinks he knows the answer, though, so he doesn’t ask.

(The answer being Annabeth searching for him for a year. The answer being Iris messages to Camp Half Blood when her dorm is asleep. The answer being her winter break spent on Long Island, smelling strawberries and feeling at home.)

—

They sleep in the same bed, and Percy wakes up with an arm thrown around Annabeth, her hair tickling his neck. He thinks about the Argo II. About Tartarus. About sneaking from one cabin to another in the dead of night. He lets himself go back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> if any of this is lore inaccurate, no it isn't <3 I haven't read a CHB book since BoO and that was years ago so who knows what's been sorted out since then. No thoughts, only percabeth. 
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr @dredfulhapiness and make sure you follow bri @tonkyman bc they’re wonderful!


End file.
